Each week I try to review and reflect on my previous week on the bike. This allows me to see how my fitness and ability is progressing on a wider timescale than day to day. For previous weekly reviews please click here.
Another intensive week on the bike – the biggest on all fronts except elevation gain when compared to the last three weeks.
And my legs are definitely feeling the fatigue.
However, I am loving how hard I am being pushed by the Tour de Zwift 2022, and the most intensive ride is still yet to come (Stage 8).
Here are this week’s rides:
- Tuesday – My Legs Were Not Grateful (Indoors / Zwift)
- Wednesday – Tour de Zwift 2022 Stage 5: Long Ride (Indoors / Zwift)
- Thursday – Late Lunch (Outdoors)
- Saturday – Pain Is Relative (Indoors / Zwift)
- Sunday – Tour de Zwift 2022 Stage 6: Long Ride (Indoors / Zwift)
Coming off Stage 6 the big question I had was whether that ~1.5 hour ride was my strongest yet on the bike.
Finding that information wasn’t as easy as I’d have liked. There are many apps that give off FTP numbers, but they tend to round things to the nearest hour, once you go above 1 hour duration. So I could see either my best hour, best two hour, but not my best 90 minutes.
Fortunately, Golden Cheetah had me covered:
So yeah… disregard that nonsense 2000 watt effort. Something went badly wrong there and I have no idea how to go back and delete an activity unfortunately. I can tell you for sure that my max sprint is nowhere near 2000 watts, and never will be.
Whilst I struggled to get a screenshot with the ride highlighted (highlit?) I can tell you that where the line dips at the end of Zone 4, it shows as 227w for 1h 26 minutes, as of Sunday just gone.
In other words, yes, it was my strongest ride at that duration. Awesome. It felt it.
With such a busy week it’s easy to forget about the other rides. I managed to get outdoors on Thursday which was much needed in order to clear my head.
Fresh air and getting away from the desk is so important to me, I’ve no idea how I managed before I got a bike. Actually, I do. I had two new borns in prams to take on long walks, to the point where I wore out the soles of my shoes.
Generally things are all moving in the right direction.
There are two things I’m concerned at the moment.
- What to do once the Tour de Zwift finishes, and
- Pushing past my peak
The TdZ is the reason I’m working as hard as I am at the moment. With the regular rides I have a nice schedule of intensive stuff on a well defined time table. I can only move the dates around so much without ending up missing out, so I am forced to do things I might (read: definitely would) not otherwise do.
How can I keep up a similar schedule once the Tour finishes?
Well, the counter point to that is I kinda can’t keep up this intensity without a break. I am all too aware my legs are in need of a more sustained period of recovery. Perhaps that comes next week, after we’re done? But will that push me into ‘easy mode’ which is always hard to break out of.
No firm answers on that at the moment.
Lastly this week I have been trying to remember to track my weight each day. It’s all a bit unusual as my weight post ride is significantly different to my ‘regular’ day weight. Hence the fluctuations.
I’m certainly not concerned with my weight at the moment. I’m tracking it because… well, why not? I like graphs, what can I say.
Plan for the week ahead is to not kill myself outside of the final two TdZ22 stages. I want to give both of them my best efforts, and Stage 8 looks like the biggest beast of all. Basically Stage 6 with double the climbing.
Outside of the TdZ I’d love to get in at least one other outdoor ride… but the weather sucks. We have a full scale storm warning in effect currently so I’m avoiding going out into the wind even though it’s sunny and dry. Shame.
I think once you get to a certain point, ie pretty much where we’re at now, you have a few choices.
1. Try and do it yourself thru trial and error and really put the hurt on yourself.
2. Pay for a structured ‘generic’ program like Trainerroad.
3. Pay for a real life coach.
1. Is currently my only option due to having too many kids haha. But it’s not easy as you found yourself, going deeper and deeper into the hurt isnt much fun.
I have found that doing 3hr sessions in Z1/Z2 power has done wonders for my endurance. At Z1/Z2 power its more of a mental game as anything as let face it, 3hrs on the trainer is pretty damned boring!
I do try to have a rest week every 4-5 weeks, doesnt always work out that way, but I try.
Training Peaks has some useful blog articles on building endurance, power and recovery. It’s worth signing up to their mailer for those.
As far as keeping it going post TdZ, do they have any local group rides in your area? Down here in paradise there is of course many shop rides and even a few paid up club rides you can join and challenge yourself against others.
Awesome – subbed to the TP newsletter, thanks for the heads up.
I’ll try Trainer Road next. My issues with all software outside Zwift / RGT has been the discrepancy between pedal power and trainer power. There’s a definite bug in my Neo that apparently impacts quite a large number of units. It throws the power off by 10%. Zwift somehow adapts to this, as does RGT. I can see it on my head unit.
I covered the problem I see in this post: https://cyclingindoors.co.uk/weekly-review-december-6th-12th-2021/
And then the ‘solution’ here: https://cyclingindoors.co.uk/active-discovery/
I wonder then if TP will suffer the same issue. It makes these programs effectively unusable to me, sadly.
🤣🤣🤣
They probably do. To be honest, beyond a glance at Facebook during Covid, I haven’t actively looked into finding a group ride. Obviously looking for a group of people sweating and heavy breathing during Covid was a stupid idea in hindsight.
I must admit, I’ve never even been in a local bike shop beyond the Evans Cycles near here, once. Evans is owned by one of the UK’s most hated individuals (Mike Ashley) so I probably shouldn’t even admit to that. They weren’t exactly fostering local community meetups though.
I’ll do some more digging regards outdoors events / group rides. Not been on my radar tbh, but it’s a good shout.
Yeah group rides are a good way to push yourself. I did a ride to work this morning over the local ranges with some mates from work. I was dying trying to keep up today, if I was by myself, I would have just eased off and thought “sod this”.
I have the same 10w power discrepancy on my Wahoo Kickr18 and Zwift. I just pair my Stages power meter as power source and the Kickr as controllable.
Sounds like all my Tour de Zwift rides so far… certainly the dying part. Pushed myself to the slightly faster group in stage 7 and inevitably died and got dropped.
Regarding pairing, yeah it works fine in Zwift & RGT that way. But in Wahoo SYSTM it will not work for me the same way. Even though I set the pedals as the power source, the NEO as controllable, it still takes the power reading from the NEO. It does read correctly, from a certain point of view. It’s just not the same POV that Zwift uses. Kinda weird.
Have you used Wahoo SYSTM? If so, and you are an active user, is there any chance you could screenshot what settings you have in the pairing box? I’m sure I’ve tried every combo, but I’m more than humble enough to admit it could well be some mistake I’m blindly / obviously making. No worries if not, I’ll try again when they next give me a demo period.
I’ve never used Wahoo SYSTM, actually your experience completely put me off it. I’m pretty much a Zwift lifer, I love the eye candy and group events etc. I did recently read a story where DC Rainmaker speculates that Zwift may merge with Trainer Road – This would be my ideal scenario.
Yeah saw the forums light up re: trainer road. Fingers crossed, though likely an increase in subs to cover it. No bad thing I suppose.
Regarding Wahoo SYSTM – don’t let me put you off. It’s worth a free trial to give it a whirl. The 4DP test, whilst brutal, is really good. Better than anything else I’ve tried in terms of pushing you to your limit.
But yeah… Zwift definitely seems the best from everything I’ve tried.